Trap
by AmberKendsLacy
Summary: He had asked her if she was a trick or a trap, and she'd said no. My Clara theory, before seeing TNOFD. Classic series must have been seen first in order to understand this.


**This was my Theory on what Clara was, before I had seen The Name of the Doctor episode. I decided to write it up for you guys since Halloween is closing in. **

**IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO NOTE THAT YOU NEED TO HAVE SEEN THE CLASSIC SERIES IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND THIS... SORRY.**

**And yeah because it's just a theory and it is actually rather farfetched it does slap continuity in the face in quite a sad fashion, so please don't flame me about how this wouldn't actually happen in the show. **

**I already know that.  
**

**So please enjoy while I go and slap continuity in the face.**

**(Goes off, head hung in shame.) **

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"Here we are, Trenzalore." The Doctor flicked one last switch on the console before straightening his bow-tie, mentally readying himself for what was going to happen next. He walked carefully out of his beloved TARDIS and onto the open and abandoned grounds of the planet, wincing with every crunch of dead leaves under his foot. Clara, as far as he knew, was right behind him, not making the smallest of peeps. Which of course the Time Lord found very suspicious.

"Are you alright Clara?" As he turned to face her and as he does so he feels the already cool temperature of the planet drop, the deathly silent world now somehow deafening to his alien ears as his eyes set on his companion. Clara was actually further away from him than he had first realized, standing perfectly stiff and still. Her head was sagging downwards, facing the lifeless ground while her brown hair fell all around her head, hiding her face from him. As The Doctor walked closer to her, he noticed that her shoulders and back were shaking slightly.

It took a moment but eventually he hears her almost silent, childish laughter, which for some reason, was freezing him right in his place. He didn't move any closer to her, in fact he takes a few steps back and pulls out his Sonic Screwdriver, quickly he scans her and reads the results, his eyebrows furrowing as he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Which, while in other cases it might be seen as a relief, this was only making him more wary of the situation.

"Clara?" Normally he'd be right by her side, trying to get her to look him in the face, to confirm to him that she was going to be alright. But this is Trenzalore, the place of his death; naturally he had to be wary of everything that seemed out of order, even if that included his companion.

Clara hadn't moved in the slightest, but her laughter had grown decibel by decibel until the Time Lord could hear it quite plainly, the creepy sound of her voice echoing through the wastelands of Trenzalore. The Doctor winced, holding his hands to his ears as the laughter still grew louder and louder, properly scaring him and accelerating his double heart beat.

"Clara stop it!" She was still ignoring him, her crazed laughter becoming twisted, wrong and louder the longer it went on, until she was practically screaming out. He couldn't take it anymore, the stress and fear he had of Trenzalore only added to his complete confusion over his companion's actions. He snapped.

"CLARA STOP IT NOW!" She falls silent. His hearts however, are still racing in his chest. She still hasn't moved from her place, but her hands are now clutching her ears, as if his outburst had frightened her like a small child would fear a scolding. Thinking the worst is over he takes a step closer, and she finally moves.

Her head snaps up to face him the moment he his foot had touched the dead soil. She was grinning, her deranged smile looking as though it could create a crack in her face. Her eyes are glassy and unfocused, just as they had been when she was processed in Mr. Sweet's factory. But this was different, he knew the cause of that then, but now he had no idea what was wrong with his companion.

"Clara." He tries again to get her to respond to him, but she just grins at him, her head overly tipping to one side. Her hands have left her ears, and are instead tightly gripped together as she takes a step towards him. Finally she does speak, but the voice that leaves her mouth is not the one he was familiar with, not the one he had traveled with for the past few months.

And was certainly not the ones he had heard from the Victorian era Nanny and the Stranded Junior Entertainment Manager.

"_Checkmate Doctor." _The voice was slightly robotic, but not in the same sense as a Dalek's voice. Rather it sounded more like a recording from an old doll. Clara's hands were no longer clasped by her sides; instead she held them out in front of her, like a ballerina would before beginning their dance. The Doctor stepped back; finally recognizing what was happening, memories from long passed passing through his mind, haunting him.

"But that's impossible." Clara continued to smile, her teeth seemingly whiter than he had ever remembered them. He scanned her again, nothing had changed. It had to be a coincidence, as if the time residue of the planet was just getting into her sadly unprotected mind. He nodded to himself, that had to be, it was either that, or a theory that was beyond the possibility of reality.

"Clara I need you to listen to me, whatever is going on in your head you have to ignore it, it's not real." She didn't falter in her stance; the toothy Cheshire grin still remained on her face. He doesn't attempt to take any further steps towards her; instead he freezes completely where he is. If it wasn't the planet affecting her mind, then what else could it have been? His mind races, but nothing other than the jarring and impossible idea comes to mind, so he decides to try it out. Hoping that he would be proven wrong.

"Celestial Toymaker." She knows he isn't naming her, that he is just voicing his knowledge, that he had figured out what was happening here. Her smile doesn't waver, but he can tell that she knows her master would be pleased at being named at last, that the mission had been successful.

"_Doctor, you have been discovered at last. It is time for you to return to my master's world, where a new game will begin. You will not escape this time." _He shakes his head, wanting to believe this nightmare wasn't real. Clara moved closer, her legs moving without bending as she went to finally capture her prey.

"I asked you before, if you were a trick or a trap, you told me you weren't." The hurt and betrayal made its first appearance at last, taking refuge in his smouldering and accusing eyes. Clara isn't (And is actually the first to not be) effected by this and instead keeps on smiling and walking on her way, her permanent grin seeming more and more horrifyingly psychotic to him as time went on. He supposed then, that she was not going to reply to that, and instead tried a different tactic, the hard truth

"But the Toymaker died, in the Time War. I was there, I saw him devoured alive by the Nightmare Child, by his very creation. How can I face him, if he is no longer there?" Clara paused then in her terrifying walk, her head once again cocking to the side. This seemed to have stumped her for a small amount of time, so the Doctor ran.

He took a quick dive for the TARDIS, only to feel an iron grip on his collar, dragging him back and shoving him to the ground. Quickly he scrambled to his feet before she could grab hold of his ankle. He jumps to his feet, her next comment chilling him down deep in his hearts cores. Yet as she speaks he quickly forms a plan, one that could safely get him out of the situation, but sadly would not assure that Clara would not be hurt.

"_The mission must have taken too long. But still there is a fix to this. You must replace the old Toymaker Doctor; truly there is not better candidate for such an honor." _He carefully circles around her as she speaks, making sure to this time around to keep his distance from her as she tells him what his decided fate shall be. She snaps to face him as soon as he is finished but is surprised to see that he is no longer terrified, no longer hurt or betrayed, instead his eyes show fury, cold yet burning fury that is subtlety seen in his eyes. She hesitates, as one should when facing the fury of a Time Lord. He smirks, holding his hands out in front of him in a stance of surrender.

"Wait, wait. I give in. But before you drag me off into you dimension, would you like to see a magic trick?" The lonely Time Lord takes her silence as a confirmation and carefully and slowly places his hands behind him, his Screwdriver falling out of the jacket sleeve into his hands. She doesn't notice him fiddling with the settings of his device, to which he is very thankful for.

He doesn't bother to wonder why she hadn't just attacked him anyway before he could fully put his plan into action, and that was because of the expression on her face. It still withheld her horridly stretched grin, but now there was a hint of something in her glassy reflective eyes. A familiar look he had seen in many an enemy, but not as severe as it was here.

The look of a cat about to catch its canary.

"_You are running out of time Doctor." _ She isn't annoyed, or even the slightest bit peeved, if anything she sounded completely calm and tolerant. It didn't matter to her really how long he took, since she knew that he was caught with no escape. Well, in her knowledge anyway.

"Don't worry; I'm always doing that Clara. But before I 'perform' my trick, I have to ask." He stops fiddling with the settings, the Screwdriver is ready for use, but still he wants to know one last thing.

"How were you both in Victorian London, and a Junior entertainment Manager turned Dalek?" Clara's head made the usual motion it did as she considered her answer, eventually she replied, her thought process most likely being that since he was captured there was no harm in telling him an honest truth.

"_The Toymaker placed me all throughout time, the plan being to capture and contend with The Doctor. However I could not be placed all through time with the programming in plain sight, as it would 'disrupt' time in my master's words. My programming was hidden for when the appropriate time would show itself."_ The Doctor nodded, but smirked, his amusement confusing her, thought she took great care in not showing it. Inside all he can feel is a twisted sensation of grief and relief.

Relief in the fact that the Clara that had traveled with him, that had held onto the leaf that had brought her parents together, that dreamed of visiting 101 places in her future, had been real. The grief however, was that despite her reality, she was gone forever. He brought his attention back on the task at hand, as he had now discovered a well placed hole in this creation's (he refused to ever again think of it as the companion he had lost) design.

"But the programming never activated with the Clara in Victorian London and the Oswin in the Asylum. Why is that?" Her expression remained in its unaltered state, but he could tell from her voice that she was angry in some way, annoyed that she had been incapable of catching him at an earlier time. As if that was to blame on her creator's death.

"_The circuitry was...faulting." _The Time Lord chuckled, a rather clear cut difference to the frightened man he had been before. He continued to softly laugh under his breath for a few more seconds, hoping that it was somehow getting on her unreal nerves.

"No that wasn't it was it? They were too human, too convinced in their humanity, to be shut down as soon as they saw me. And by the time the programming was on line and ready to get me, Clara had died. And Oswin... she was taken over by another technology, one that wiped you out before you even had the chance to start." He's goading her, openly laughing at her for her weakness. And despite her inhumanity, her supposed inability to feel, she does feel provoked, and strikes back accordingly.

"_She never existed Doctor; she was merely a file in my processed data. A file doomed to deletion." _The strike hits its target, just like his Screwdriver does scramble her processors, causing her drop to the ground in a rigid state, completely incapable of stopping The Time Lord as he runs into his TARDIS, slamming the doors behind him as fast as he could.

Clara eventually recovers from his attack and starts her tirade on the royal blue doors of his Time Machine. There are no screams from her, no angry demands for him to face her. Instead as he flicks and presses the appropriate switches and buttons for the TARDIS to dematerialize, he hears her voice, as calm and unhurried as before, through the ancient wooden door that separated them.

He listens to her speak, his true age seemingly piling on to him on that moment alone. The Oncoming Storm is seen in that moment, it's complete eternity engraved upon his expression, like the carved words of death upon a tombstone. Outside he is angry, burning and searing with hatred. But inside...

Inside he silently weeps for the friend, the Soufflé girl, he had lost.

"_Run you clever boy, and remember." _

* * *

**Tick tock goes the clock and time goes round and round,**

**Tick tock goes the clock till the next Toymakers found.**

* * *

**(Currently hugging a sobbing Continuity.)**

**Look I said I was sorry, I couldn't help it...**

**(Sees audience)**

**Oh, well umm... Thanks for reading, please review, constructive criticism really appreciated as always.**

**(Looks back at Continuity.)**

**Hey come on, I know what will cheer you up! Let's go watch K9 And Company!**

**(Continuity slaps author)**

**...I deserve that. **


End file.
